Preamble
Leland (Lee) Beaumont has been a fellow traveller in the quest to raise the value of wisdom over narrower views of rationality. Whilst I’ve been blogging he’s been building a massive “Wisdom Wikiversity” resource. His focus has always been more educational whereas mine was (and is) on documenting a more abstract philosophical framework (good > epistemology > ontology > metaphysics). You see how massive his resource is from this Applied Wisdom / Curriculum page which indexes and groups his many modular “lessons”.
We mostly corresponded by email over the years, sharing links etc, but there are several references in the Psybertron blog too. We share a lot of common sources and general agreement on the subject matter but we’ve not corresponded for a few years, partly (a) because one mis-perceived difference between us that he was nevertheless biased towards good-old-fashioned rationality and critical thinking (patently not true) and partly (b) because my own focus shifted to “systems thinking as a response to complexity” in constructing my philosophical framework(s) above (and partly the distraction of Pirsig’s #ZMM50th).
Reformation
For both of us however, “Wisdom” is consolidated as the word of choice – short-hand for our subject matter – the missing ingredient for a world better than the predicament we currently find ourselves in. Most recently Lee has called his project to achieve this a new global “Reformation” to educate ourselves (learning beats teaching, etc.)
It’s a “two-page” summary with updated links to the key lessons from the Wikiversity resource he has created. A recommended read, it’s excellent, notwithstanding the comments I make below, almost all of which are about alignment with my own work, some of which I’d captured in an initial response on LinkedIn:
Wisdom
Despite the fact that “critical thinking” is still prominent in the introduction and the graphic headline text, his introduction concludes with “more wisdom” and “greater integrity”, and the first bullet of the first preparatory section mentions wisdom twice – proposing “living wisely” and adopting “wise practices”.
No doubt that wisdom is front and centre.
Integrity
Significant that integrity makes the summary. Generally most would interpret this as something like “consistently incorruptible honesty” in the words and actions of people, but actually integrity is even more fundamental than that from the systems integration perspective.
Honesty and good faith – virtue – are a given, but consistency is over-rated (see Brunsson on the positive value of “hypocrisy”). From a “systems thinking” view of everything – as a complex web of functional interactions – it cannot all be equally true and consistent all of the time, they’re always in an state of flux – whether at glacial / evolutionary pace, or the pace of day-to-day human activity and everything in between. So, the web of stuff is generally always full of inconsistencies. The real need is the joined-up “holistic” systems thinking – seeing functionally integrated wholes in systems terms of their parts and ecosystems – so that current gaps and inconsistencies are visible, intelligible, manageable and improvable. Managed inconsistency beats artificially – dishonestly – constrained consistency.
On this systems integration perspective, see Lee’s piece on “Interdependence”. He even uses the phrasing:
Every living being, every system—natural or human-made—exists in a vast network of relationships and flows. The Earth is not a collection of isolated entities but a deeply intertwined system where changes in one area inevitably ripple through many others. Understanding these interconnections is essential for sustaining life and ensuring the well-being of future generations.
That …
using the word “system” twice
… is all I mean by “systems thinking” 🙂
Information & Belief
More common ground for us. Information is fundamental to my philosophical framework, metaphysical even. And reformation includes concern for journalism, media & social media standards – prominently recurring here too. True belief is of course fundamental to my epistemological “knowledge” agenda – what does it mean to (believe you) know anything? Something which involves systems of belief & value as well as explicit concepts of evidence, logic and proof. (Even “good religion”(*) – or sacred naturalism in my terms.)
Governance
Governance has been explicit to my Cybernetic focus on systems – aka Psybernetic to emphasise the original human intentional aspect of Wiener’s term – well beyond feedback, command & control allusions. Cybernetics literally means governance. Not surprisingly governance conceptually has constantly circled round for me to government practically and politically – organisationally, locally, nationally and supra-nationally.
Lee’s two-page summary doesn’t currently mention democracy, but for the same reason I do mention it. Not only is it clearly “broken” in the 21st C and fixing it a fundamental part of any reformation project – for both of us. The estates, institutions and processes of democracy may be broken and under attack from many misinformed, misguided directions. As Churchill said – it’s the worst form of government apart from all the others – so there isn’t much alternative to working out the best way to improve and defend it.
My own (UK) emphasis has been institutional arrangements that maintain democracy between elections, so that elections are less focal, campaigns a less dominant & less frequent part of the whole, and that we have “properly proportional” electoral systems that better avoid the tyrannies of both majorities and minorities. Also, extending the bicameral basics to “differently appointed” second houses & heads of state as well as to additional local / topical “people’s” assemblies or standing forums.
Lee elsewhere has interest in similar aspects of other (US) electoral system reforms:
I think the only difference between us is, as I noted earlier, that I’m happy to continue at the conceptual level – the frameworks and characteristics that make for good systems & models of knowledge & governance – whereas Lee is focussed on education of the specific options & choices of processes & models available. I think Lee’s choices fit my frameworks, we appear complementary.
Coda
The remaining “problem” is a fact for all human endeavours and that is the imperfection of language; that communication is a “game” in the true sense. We all choose to emphasise different preferred words, their usage and their intended interpretations, even where our intentions remain closely aligned. Although the word Wisdom – partly because it’s so ill-defined – has found traction in most dialogues, choices of language around (say) systems and complexity remain problematic – quite strongly held critical differences killing creative dialogue.
Practice intentional evolution.
We can do this!
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(*) Zen Coda
When it comes to value & belief systems Lee mentions the concept of good religion but doesn’t mention any specific philosophical or theological world-views in his two-page “Reformation” summary. I noted above that the closest thing to religion (secular, non-ideological-dogmatic religion) I would ascribe to myself is Sacred Naturalism (aka Natural Theology) (even Humanism is this kind of religion although most humanists would rail against the suggestion.) However, of course, my own systems-thinking metaphysical philosophy has evolved from Taoist / Zen Buddhist thinking triggered by Nobel-prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson triggering my reading Robert Pirsig’s ZMM. And the rest is history from my perspective.
So, although not mentioned by Lee in that Reformation summary, you will find his Wikiversity resources include “The Wise Path” as progress toward wisdom. So, no explicit mention of The Way / Tao / Dao and yet very clear on becoming as opposed to being (wise) and doing good, with a reference to the work of French / Nepalese Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard.
It’s all connected.
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